Performing an astonishing U-turn, Niall Ferguson, pictured, said the 'EU deserved Brexit' because of its failure on the euro and the economy, its aggressive foreign policy, open border migration and its failure to combat radical Islam

One of the country's most influential historians yesterday admitted he had been wrong to endorse the Remain campaign – and should have backed Brexit.

Before the referendum, Professor Niall Ferguson had been one of the most vociferous supporters of Britain staying in the European Union.

He had warned that leaving the EU would be 'the ultimate divorce', dubbing its supporters 'happy morons' and 'Anglo-loonies' who ignored the serious damage that would be done to the economy.

But yesterday, in an astonishing reversal, he said he had been wrong and admitted he – and the rest of the elite – had failed to listen to voters concerned about immigration. Brexit, he said, was the 'revolt' of provincial England.

The 52-year-old, who is a professor at Harvard in the US, also issued a scathing critique of the EU, which he said 'deserved Brexit' after failing on 'monetary union, foreign policy, migration policy, radical Islam policy'.

Speaking at the Milken Institute conference on the future of Europe in London, he said: 'I'm going to do something very unusual on these occasions, I'm going to admit that I was wrong.

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'I characterise my 2016 in terms of post-Brexit traumatic stress disorder. I was arguing right up to the referendum for Remain but it's one of the few times in my life I've argued something without wholly believing in it.'

He said he had done so because he 'didn't want the Cameron-Osborne government to fall'.

With hindsight, he said, David Cameron should have rejected the 'absolutely risible' offer from the EU on migration and backed Brexit as well.

Professor Ferguson then listed the EU's failures over the past decade including the euro, which he said had been a 'disaster for all the reasons we said it would be in the 1990s'.

'It has been a disaster for southern Europe and has only worked for Germany and northern Europe,' he said.

'European security policy, especially with respect to North Africa and the Middle East, has been a disaster.

Before the referendum, Professor Niall Ferguson had been one of the most vociferous supporters of Britain staying in the European Union

'On the migration issue the European leadership got it disastrously wrong. On the question of radical Islam the European leadership has fundamentally got it wrong. One has to recognise that the European elite's performance over the last decade entirely justified the revolt of provincial England that was what we saw in Brexit.

'If those of us who were part of the elite spent more time in pubs in provincial England and provincial Wales we would have heard what I just said.

'This is not about GDP, it is principally about the complete loss of control of the EU's external border and what that implies for our country's future.

'I have had a kind of awakening. Brexit woke me up and reminded me I needed to pay much more attention to what the non-elite majority of voters were thinking.'

On Twitter he wrote: 'Cameron should have rejected [the EU's deal] and backed Brexit. Me too.'

Last night Brexit supporters welcomed his change of heart.

In a conference titled 'The Future of Europe,' he said he was wrong to defend David Cameron and George Osborne's arguments about the threat Brexit posed to economic growth. Pictured, the former Prime Minister and Chancellor on the referendum campaign trail together

In a series of tweets today, historian Niall Ferguson explained why he had changed his mind on Brexit and admitted he was wrong to back the Remain campaign

Matthew Elliott, who was chief executive of Vote Leave, said: 'It's great that people who supported Remain have woken up to the fact Britain is right to leave the EU. That is not just eminent historians like Niall Ferguson – large parts of the population who have found that Project Fear didn't come true now support Brexit.'

Less than a month before the June vote, Professor Ferguson signed a letter suggesting with Brexit we would 'cast ourselves adrift, condemning ourselves to irrelevance and Europe to division and weakness'.

He also wrote an article for the Sunday Times with the headline 'Brexit's happy morons don't give a damn about the costs of leaving'. In it he quoted warnings about the impact on the economy from the International Monetary Fund, as well as banks Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche.

'The risk of Brexit is already acting like a flashing red light to foreign investors,' he wrote. 'Project Fear? No. This is the consensus of the financial world, from the IMF down. Only a happy moron would ignore these dangers.'

Then, just two days before the vote, he described Brexit as 'the ultimate divorce' in an article for the Spectator.

A MAN OF COSMIC CERTAINTIES

Professor Niall Ferguson relishes his reputation as one of the world's best-known, globe-trotting historians.

He is, it must be said, not a modest man. On his own website he boasts he's 'an accomplished biographer' and that one of his books was 'published to international critical acclaim'.

I suspect he was flattered when newspapers suggested that he earned $5 million a year — because he reacted by saying publicly that the figure was 'ridiculous'. Whether it was too low, he didn't say.

Throughout the Brexit campaign, he posed as the intellectual heavyweight of Project Fear.

With a tone of cosmic certainty and sophisticated historical authority — this is not a man who wears his cleverness lightly on his sleeve — he denounced the idea of EU withdrawal as 'horrendous' and a 'nightmare'.

In the weeks before the June 23 vote, Ferguson, without a scintilla of doubt, predicted that the 'result would be a landslide for Remain'.

A professor at Harvard and the author of 14 major books, the 52-year-old is renowned for his phenomenal literary output, assured media performances and gift for powerful language — using a knowledge of history as a tool to illuminate the present.

In his best-selling books he has addressed history's sweeping themes — war, money and empire.

Last year, he published a 1,000-page authorised biography of former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger — the first of two volumes.

In 2004, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, while he was also an adviser to the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008.

There can be little doubt that this conversion by a man with such impressive credentials is a major blow to the Remain camp.

He is, as I say, not a man to whom modesty comes easily.

Academic life in Britain is 'so shallow', he moaned when explaining his decision to base himself in the USA.

Though thin-skinned over coverage of his own personal life, he has never been shy about dishing it out to those he derides.

For example, he called Brexiteers 'Anglo-loonies' and made personal jibes about the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, saying he had no interest in Britain's long-term future because he was gay and childless.

Ferguson later apologised, admitting his comments were 'as stupid as they were insensitive'.

Considering his Brexit U-turn, how ironic it is that it was Keynes who, in defence of intellectual inconsistency, said: 'When the facts change, I change my mind . . .'

EMINENT HISTORIAN WAS AN INTELLECTUAL CHAMPION OF THE REMAIN CAMP, EXCORIATING BREXITEERS AS 'LOONS'

A VERY COSTLY DIVORCE

'I worry about a sterling crisis [caused by Brexit] and I have been through a divorce myself so I know these things are rarely swift and always costly. This would be the Mother of all Divorces, believe me.'

Addressing a conference, May 2016

'You are voting for a divorce, my pro-Brexit friends. And, like most divorces, it's going to take much longer than you think and cost much more.'

The Spectator, two days before the vote

BREXIT'S HAPPY MORONS

'It is the proponents of Brexit who are the utopians. Far from being Eurosceptics, they are Anglo-loonies.'

The Sunday Times, February

In an article headed 'Brexit's happy morons don't give a damn about the costs of leaving', he wrote: 'When I see the risks of Brexit being glossed over in ways that would disgrace an undergraduate essay, I feel anything but happy.'

The Sunday Times, April

'Today there are a great many Brexiteers who would love to pin all the UK's problems on the EU. Trust me: most of those problems will still be there after Brexit, along with a heap of nasty new ones. And you'll have no one left to blame but yourself.'

The Spectator, two days before the vote

TO HELL IN A HANDCART

'History shows that when Britain disengages from the continent, the continent goes to hell in a handcart. That is the clear lesson of the 20th century. The notion that we can sail off into the Atlantic and drop our anchor close to Bermuda is absurd.'

May

'The arguments for Brexit are not historically credible. They are frivolous — and self-seeking in the case of Boris Johnson.'

May

In an article headlined 'Brexiteers isolated from Britain's duty to save Europe', he wrote: 'If only historians got to vote in next month's referendum, I am confident the result would be a landslide for Remain.'

The Sunday Times, May

TALKING BRITAIN DOWN

'The economic consequences of leaving the EU would be horrendous. If you think about it, the UK has a very large current account deficit, about 7 per cent of GDP. I can't believe that capital would be pouring into a country that has just voted to leave the EU. Many major corporations are in the UK precisely because it gives them access to the single market.'

On U.S. TV, May

On Barack Obama's notorious remark that the UK would be at the 'back of the queue' in any trade deal with the U.S. post-Brexit, he said: 'I think Obama was right and I was glad to see him intervening. It is not good for the West as a whole if Britain leaves.'

May

'My attitude is not based on macro-economics, though I welcomed the IMF's doom-mongering as an important part of the Government's strategy.'

May

'The money Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have promised to spend on the NHS and cuts in VAT will be swallowed up by the post-Brexit recession and negotiations nightmare.'

The Spectator, June

LITTLE ENGLANDERS

'One need have no illusions about Brussels to believe that Britain must remain in the EU. I certainly have none. But one does need to have illusions — fantasies about a largely imaginary 'Anglosphere' or some Tory version of Ourselves Alone — to believe that we can somehow exit Europe, pull up an imaginary drawbridge and resuscitate a 19th-century ideal of parliamentary sovereignty.'

February

'The absurdity of Brexit is to walk away from our position [in Europe]. In effect, we have seats on the board; we are major shareholders and we are about to walk away. We won't be compensated. We will actually be penalised for giving up our power just at the moment when we won the argument.'

May

POST-VOTE DOOM-MONGERING

Under the headline 'Brexit: victory for older voters but disaster for the economy', he wrote: 'The UK has just voted itself into recession.'

He continued: 'The fact that neither of the leaders of the Brexit movement . . . is in a hurry to seize the reins of power . . . tells us all we need to know about the fundamental frivolity of the Leave campaign. They assiduously denied that Brexit would have severe economic consequences. Now they would like someone else to reap their whirlwind.'

And: 'This is a victory from beyond the grave for two of the leading populists of the 1970s. Enoch Powell, a one-time Conservative cabinet minister, was against UK membership of the European Economic Community . . . The other was Tony Benn, whose Euroscepticism was rooted in his socialist convictions. Congratulations, then, to the dead — Enoch and Tony — and to the ageing English working-class. You won.'

The Sunday Times, four days after the vote to leave

HEADING FOR A RECESSION

'There is no evidence as yet to dismiss the predictions that the UK would suffer a recession if the electorate voted to leave the EU. I still expect it to, as investment appears to have ground to a halt. The mountains of the Earth are still standing. But that sucking noise you hear is the sound of financial services jobs leaving London.'

The Boston Globe, July

And a week later: 'It is too early to tell just how grave the consequences of Brexit will be, but Fleet Street is still full of swivel-eyed optimists fantasising that either Theresa May or Andrea Leadsom is the next Margaret Thatcher.'

AND YESTERDAY'S U-TURN

ON Twitter he wrote: 'My mistake was uncritically defending Cameron and Osborne instead of listening to people in pubs. Issue was not GDP but future migration.'

AND: 'Mistake was not referendum but acceptance of EU's risible offer on migrant benefits. Cameron should have rejected and backed Brexit. Me too.'